Accomplishments

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Serving more than 85,000 infants, children and youth from across BC each year, BC Children’s Hospital is an academic teaching patient and family-centred health sciences centre focused on the best health outcomes for children and youth.

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Improving health for kids

With Canada’s second-lowest wait times, the BC Children’s emergency department provides high-quality, efficient care – meaning many patients return home more quickly. Our wait times are as low as one-third the wait times of other similar Canadian hospitals.

Our world-class cancer care and treatment programs ensure health outcomes for children are above the national average and survival rates for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia are the best in the world among G7 countries.

Children and families have a shorter wait time for an autism assessment, as the BC Autism Assessment Network has increased the number of assessments completed per year – to a record high of 1,972 in 2015/2016.

Enabling greater access to specialist care for patients and families through outreach clinics which increased by 30 per cent in 11 clinical areas, meaning lower travel costs and less disruption for patients and families.

Codeveloped the pediatric early warning systems - an North American first—that identify when to safely escalate care concerns for children with worsening symptoms, mitigating their risks and ensuring they receive the right care as quickly as possible.

Our hip surveillance program for children with cerebral palsy—a first of its kind in North America and one of six globally—ensures children at risk for hip displacement receive appropriate screening and are referred, when needed, to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon to minimize or prevent complications associated with hip dislocations.

World-class research

Researchers continue to lead the development of national and international health guidelines:

The finding that three or four doses of the preventative drug palivizumab provides the same protection to infants at risk of a serious respiratory virus as five doses, which resulted in a revision of the Canadian Pediatric Association national drug guidelines.

Excellence in mental health care

BC Children’s child and youth mental health programs are world class. On their 2016 Royal Tour, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (William and Kate) met with staff and Kelty Mental Health Resource Centre representatives as well as volunteers and patients and families from across BC in hopes of bringing similar supports to youth in the United Kingdom.

Expanding patient care service

Our care teams work to improve access for children and families throughout the province and their efforts are often best-in-class in BC, like the Telehealth Outreach Psychiatry Service (TOPS) program that received the Premier’s Partnership Award in 2016—the BC Public Service’s highest recognition. TOPS provides psychiatric consults to 16 communities in northern BC by connecting a psychiatrist located in Vancouver to a remote Child and Youth Mental Health team, via telehealth (videoconferencing) technology.

The Children's Heart Centre is the first in Canada to use a new advanced diagnostic tool to provide cardiologists with improved intravascular views and to better map changes in blood vessels. The machine provides high resolution images of the blood vessels and allows for virtual three-dimensional reconstruction of those vessels, so care and treatment are more precise for each child.